Lessons from a decade's research on poverty alleviation

1. LESSONS FROM A DECADE’S RESEARCH ON POVERTY: INNOVATION, ENGAGEMENT AND IMPACT
CONFERENCE
Venue: FAIRCITY ROODEVALLEI HOTEL, PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA
MARCH 16-18, 2016
ORGANISED BY IDS SUSSEX, ESRC AND DFID

2. ACKNOWELEDGEMENT
RESEARCH UNDERTAKEN AT: CENTRE FOR URBAN EQUITY, CEPT UNIVERSITY,
AHMEDABAD
CO-AUTHOR: RENU DESAI
RESEARCH FUNDED BY: INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE (IDRC)
CANADA & DFID, UK
RESEARCH LOCALES
AHMEDABAD
GUWAHATI
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3. • Introduction - Research Questions and Objectives
• Conceptual Framework
• Methodology
• Meta-findings on pre-conditions for and pathways and impacts of everyday
conflicts due to planning or lack of it in Ahmedababad
3
Structure of the presentation
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

4. • Do the current practice of exclusive urban planning and
governance lead to conflicts and violence in the Indian Cities
and if they do what are the pathways through which exclusive
urban planning and governance lead to different types of
violence on the poor and by the poor?
• Conversely, would inclusive urban planning and
governance offer possibility of reducing conflicts and violence
in Indian cities?
4
Research Question
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

5. RESPONSES
State actions
Drivers
Pre-conditions
mitigating
Policy Legislation
perpetuating
People’s actions
coping
Impact on livesConflict Violence
Crime
Pathway
Non-state actions
mitigating claim-
makingperpetuating
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6. Methodology
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7. Introducing research city
Build upon CUE’s prior research in the city
Ahmedabad
• Metropolitan city with 6.5 million population
• Located in a State with high growth, medium HDI
• City with a history of communal conflicts and politics resulting in
segmentation
• Urban planning and development based on a capitalist model (to deal with
private lands and landowners); divided city, spatial inequity, but also strong
presence of state.
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8. Ahmedabad: Focus areas of research
and case-study locales
Focus areas selected based on previous research & key informant interviews.
• BSUP resettlement sites:
• Total of about 20 resettlement sites with total of about 18,000 housing units
• Criteria for case-study selection: size of site, location, level of functional services & amenities, social fabric, local
leadership
• Vatwa with 7 adjacent sites with total of about 9,000 housing units: 3 sites inhabited with about 5,000 housing
units
• Informal commercial subdivision on urban periphery, also a Muslim ghetto:
• Criteria for case-study selection: recent state intervention through TPS implementation
• Bombay Hotel with about 25,000 households
• Women’s safety and public transport
• Criteria for case-study selection: peripheral urban areas, which are also sites of above research; different
transport modes being used by women.
• Vatwa BSUP sites and Bombay Hotel
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9. MAP SHOWING LOCATION OF STUDY SITES IN AHMEDABAD
INFORMAL COMMERCIAL SUBDIVISION
BOMBAY HOTEL
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BSUP RESETTLEMENT SITES
VATWA

10. Presentation focus - Ahmedabad
Issues on:
i) Housing – location and tenure
ii) Basic services
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11. • Base paper on cities with discussion on pre-conditions
• Mapping localities
• Ethnography
• Training of local researchers and student researchers
• FGDs (all study sites) and Unstructured Group Discussions (only Vatwa)
• Key informant interviews
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Methodology

12. • Structural violence (deprivation, impoverishment, marginalization) due to urban
planning and policies that exclude the urban poor and lower-income groups –
also called indirect violence
• Direct violence – types: self-inflicted; domestic & interpersonal; group violence;
institutional violence; etc.
• Conflict defined as “situations where individuals and groups have incongruent
interests that are contradictory and potentially mutually exclusive” (Moser &
Horn 2011) – conflict, when not resolved tips over into (direct) violence.
• One type of conflict / violence often transforms into another type(s)
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Types of conflicts
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

13. • Structural violence in everyday life – State at the Centre
• Everyday conflicts – with the state and non-state actors; within spatially-
defined communities and even within the household; between non-state
actors over control over resource(s)
• Everyday threat of violence – from the state and non-state actors
• Conflict with Nature – human conflicts with ecological systems spilling
into everyday conflicts or threat of it
• Episodic violence – Occasional episodes of violence
Our case studies and those in this conference can be fitted in these
categories
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Types of conflicts observed that impact the lives of
the poor and marginalized
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

14. • Planning as practiced creates perpetual vulnerabilities and
exclusions
• These then lead to web of vulnerabilities
• Creates situations for conflicts
• Web of conflicts, one leading to another
• Finally, leads to denial of life chances
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Meta-findings – Structural Violence
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

15. 15
META-FINDINGS: CONSTRAINED MOBILITY, STRESSED LIVELIHOODS AND DEPRIVATIONS, ON
RESETTLEMENT SITES AND PERI-URBAN LOCALES
Cases presented:
i) Vatwa resettlement site, Ahmedabad
ii) Peri-urban site, Ahmedabad
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

16. 16
META-FINDINGS: RESETTLEMENT, DEPRIVATIONS AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
Resettlement leading to:
• decline in income leading to
stressed livelihoods
• increased living costs – housing
and transport
• increased structural violence
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

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• Following from previous slide,
income decline leads to
engagement in illicit activities
and depending on survival
through theft/ robbery/
burglary
• Social disruptions due to
resettlement process has led to
loss of internal social control,
allowing illicit activities and theft
to thrive more easily
• Increase in every insecurities
META-FINDINGS: RESETTLEMENT SITES, ILLICIT ACTIVITIES AND CONSTANT THREATS OF VIOLENCE

18. 18LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS
META-FINDINGS: RESETTLEMENT SITES, ILLICIT ACTIVITIES AND CONSTANT THREATS OF VIOLENCE
• Illicit activities and robbery
lead to constant threat of
violence in public spaces
• Women, in particular, are
more vulnerable
• Reduction in women’s
mobility at local level

19. • Denial of water by the state in peri-urban sites – Water provision by
non-state actors, threat of violence and violence – can lead to
conflicts among residents.
• Inadequate water flows due to narrow technical approach towards
water provision by the state at resettlement sites in Ahmedabad,
structural violence of resettlement exacerbates water governance
issues, deepening inadequate water flows. Leads to conflicts between
residents and the state; residents and water operators; between
residents; sometimes between operators
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Meta-findings – Everyday conflicts around basic
services
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

20. • Informal development in peri-urban areas, through commercial sub-divisions
• Spurious bookings of land plots and resulting conflicts
• Incremental filling-up leaving vacant plots
• Vacant plots usurped by goons to extort money from informal owners in return
for vacating plots
• Vacant plots used for illicit activities
• Vacant plots used for dumping garbage, leading to their further abandonment
and prime sites for illicit activities
• Lack of organizing of public and open spaces, creating insecure sites
• Street lights not present; if present vandalized by local goons
• Sites unsafe for women
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Meta-findings – Non-planning and unsafe spaces in
informal peri-urban settlements & resettlement sites
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

21. • Low-income migrants to the city find their own housing
• One option is purchasing housing in informal commercial subdivisions in
large cities where lands are increasingly not available for squatting
• In smaller cities, encroachment of the ‘commons’
• Urban Planning as practice has no tools to address informal housing today
• Gujarat has no instrument to regularize tenure
• TP Scheme, as promoted, is not the answer
• Pre-requisite for tenure regularization is evidence of urban citizenship
• Till then, constant conflict with state, evictions and demolitions
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Meta-findings – Tenure insecurity and conflicts
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

22. Mitigating conflicts and structural violence,
experiences and possibilities
• In some contexts, conflict mitigation is not possible unless macro-level policies
and planning approach are changed, i.e. w.r.t. housing and resettlement
• In some contexts, existing laws have to be implemented, i.e. for the street
vendors
• In some contexts, existing policies have to be implemented, i.e. National
Urban Transport Policy
• Dynamics of electoral democracy, which opens spaces for local negotiation, leads
to incremental improvements and conflict reduction, i.e. in Bombay Hotel in
Ahmedabad. But this may be uneven with improvements only in areas of
electoral support or strong local leaders mediating such support
• Intervention of CBOs
• Innovative, decentralized urban planning practices such as Local Area Plans
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23. • The urban development as practice has been laissez-faire
• Welfare state has been absent
• Welfare state subsidies benefitted the rich
• Welfare state provisions subverted as far as the urban poor are concerned
• Poor survived and gained foothold through ‘patron-client’ relationship
• Flexible state depending on the local pressures (Accommodation politics)
• This politics is rarely transformative, leading to incremental rights/ citizenship [i.e.
SNP], continuing vulnerabilities temporally and spatially leading sometimes to
reversal of rights, flexibility to sometimes accommodate vested interest and
sometimes for practical reasons of its inability to intervene
• Globalisation has led to Elite Control of Ideology and Resources
through Neo-Statism
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From Laissez-faire to Elite Capture
LAISSEZ-FAIRE URBAN DEVELOPMENT, ELITE CONTROL THROUGH NEO-STATISM AND PATHWAYS TO EVERYDAY CONFLICTS

24. People’s Engagements with the State
• Two broad type of engagements
• Survival rights (right to ‘stay put’: Weinstein for Dharavi, or Newman for NY; right for ‘life space’:
Friedmann) (Bombay Hotel and BSUP sites in Ahmedabad; Street vendor markets in Guwahati)
• Political rights (KMSS struggle for land rights in Guwahati with occasional violence by state and
counter-violence by people)
• Struggles for survival rights often try to extend the boundaries for larger political
negotiations (Street vendors in Guwahati)
• Our study (in Guwahati) finds that with the help of local NGOs, formation of Welfare
Associations such as Unnayan Samitis, issue-based associations, attempt to protect
survival rights and also negotiate day-to-day conflicts or mitigate conflictual
situations.
• Our study (in Ahmedabad) finds that local leaders and networks of leaders attempt to
protect survival rights – degree of their autonomy from party politics varies over space and
time – but so far they are able to play only a limited role in negotiating day-to-day
conflicts and violence related to basic services and use of public spaces.
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25. Inclusive Planning and Governance
• Requires change in planning approach from top-down,
planner as know-all expert and state-led to bottom-up,
state-facilitated, planner-as-one-of-the-actors approach.
• This goes hand-in-hand with process of deepening of
democracy.
• Conflict mitigation through the above two broad processes.
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26. Thankyou
Website: http://www.crdf.org.in/cue/saic/